Change communication - 5 ways to create lasting change in the company

Change communication

Communication is one of the strongest components in creating change.

Some communication and HR departments find that their message is not received properly by the employees and thus the creation of a long lasting change was not successful.

We are living in a VUCA world, so in this article, you will learn how to communicate the changes so that they last and create fruitful results for your company.

1. The message must be clear

Often, messages for change can sound like platitudes: "We want to focus on the customers' needs" - but how?

There is a risk that the message will be too vague when it is delivered as slogans. It is therefore important that the employees are introduced to the change in a way where they are presented with what the change means for them and the way they act in their work.

In change communication, the focus must be on what the employees must do differently. Therefore, it is important to find out what you want from the communication. You can read about this in the next section.

The communication goal

According to communication researcher Helle Petersen, there are four different communication goals when it involves a desire to create a change. These can be seen in the following points:

1. Attention
2. Knowledge or understanding
3. Attitude or acceptance
4. Action

In the above, the numbers should be seen as ranking from easy to difficult communication. That is to say, if your company wants, for example, a behavioural change in your employees, then more communication is needed than if the goal was to get your employees' attention.

One way to meet a change in behaviour would be to start from these questions, based on the four communication goals:

1. The informative level - What has happened?
2. The explanatory level - Why has it happened?
3. The attitude level - What does it mean for me?
4. The instructing level - What should I do?

It is these levels and questions that you can relate to if you want to introduce a change to your employees. In this way, you familiarise yourself with what your employees think, feel and do already when you create the strategy.

2. Change management

When the change has to be communicated, it is important that you communicate continuously. It is essential to see the change as a process and not as an event that only needs to be communicated once

A solution to this problem can be planning the communication for the entire change process. Here you can advantageously answer questions such as "how long is the process?" and "how should we approach the process?"

Therefore, time and continuity are the main components when it comes to change. By implementing these via change management, you will achieve the best results. But this does not help if the employees do not take the new changes to heart. Therefore, you can find out how to avoid this problem by reading along in the next section.

3. Make sure that the employees take the new changes to heart

Just because a message has been communicated repeatedly does not mean that the message has been received by the company's employees. Therefore, it is an advantage if the message is not only communicated via channels such as newsletters, e-mails, presentations and large meetings, but that you also value having a dialogue with the employees.

Studies show that we humans remember best if we communicate with each other rather than to each other.  If you primarily use one way communication channels, this contributes to employees' attention and knowledge, but not to attitude and action.

With this in mind, we can dig a little deeper by looking at who is going to deliver the change.

4. Choose the right person to convey your message

There is no point in communicating the message of change if it is not the right people who convey it. If a large company wants to create lasting change, it is important that top management is also engaged.

If the management and top management are also part of the dissemination of the message, this can affect the employees' commitment, as the change is prioritised as an important part of the company's overall communication strategy.

5. Appeal to the familiar and safe when the change needs to be communicated

When the change is to be implemented in your company, you can advantageously delete the word "new" from your vocabulary.

Communicate all the processes that should not be changed. You can use these questions as a starting point when communicating the change:

1. What have you already succeeded very well with in the old strategy?
2. How can you continue to work with the old strategy?
3. Which processes and ways of working will you keep?
4. Which tasks remain unchanged?

By starting from something that is familiar, the employees can more easily accept the new information, which is a necessity when changes are to be created.

The next good question is how do you create change when: